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Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Halloween Hoot Owl Cookies

When I was a little girl, my fondest memories are of my mother happily baking in the kitchen. And in the Autumn and Winter, she was baking every chance she could get. I remember once coming home from "trick 'r treating" to the smell of homemade yeast donuts. Ooooh if you ever tasted my mother's donuts, it would ruin you for life on the donut shops!

This recipe for Hoot Owl Cookies is a refrigerator cookie. Mom used to make these around Halloween.
It comes from an Old Pillsbury Family cookbook, but I have adjusted the recipe a bit.

2-1/2 cups cake flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp fine salt

3/4 cup butter

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp madagascar vanilla

1/4 teaspoon Caramel Lorann Oil

1-1/2 squares unsweetened baking chocolate, melted and cooled

1/4 tsp baking soda

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For decorating

Semi-sweet or Milk chocolate Chips for eyes

White Chocolate Chips or Cashews for beak

In a bowl, Sift flour with baking powder and salt. Set aside. In mixing bowl, cream butter with electric mixer at med speed , beat until creamy smooth, then gradually add brown sugar, incorporating well. Add egg, vanilla and Lorann Oil and mix well. Stir in flour mixture, adding 1/4 cup at a time until well mixed.

Divide cookie dough into thirds, and remove 1/3 dough. Stir baking soda into chocolate, then add to the 1/3 dough, mixing well. Cover and chill until the dough can be easily handled.

Divide the plain and chocolate dough in half. Return half of the dough to refrigerator.

Roll the plain dough to a 4-1/2 x 10" rectangle on lightly floured wax paper. Roll the chocolate dough into a 10" long roll. Place the chocolate roll on the center of the rectangle

.

Lift the sides of the of the wax paper to roll cover the chocolate roll with the plain dough.

Wrap the wax paper around the dough and chill. Repeat process with remaining cookie dough.

Chill dough well, for at least two hours. I usually prepare the night before and allow to chill overnight for easier handling.

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Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cut the firmly chilled roll into 1/8-1/4" slices.

Place two sliced cookies touching in the middle on a greased cookie sheet or Silpat mat.

This creates the owl face with two eyes.

After all the cookies are placed on the cookie sheet, they will have softened. Pinch the top corners of the cookie to make ears.

If you want to make a Menacing Owl, push the top of plain cookie dough forward over chocolate dough eye, as shown.

Place one chocolate chip on each eye. You can place them with the point up, but I also like to push the pointed end of the chocolate chip into the cookie to create a flat pupil to the eye.

The original recipe calls for a cashew nut for the owl's beak. This is quick and easy, and once the cookies are baked and cooled, they will be ready to serve. But because nut allergies have become prevalent, if I am baking for a group other than my family, I wait until the cookies have cooled and add the beak later, using melted white chocolate.

Bake the cookies in a 350 oven for 8-12 minutes until lightly browned on the sides. Remove from oven and place cookies on a cooling rack.

When the cookies have thoroughly cooled, melt about 1/2 cup of White Chocolate chips. Spoon melted chocolate into a plastic pastry bag with a #8 tip.

Pipe a bead on the left side of bottom center, as shown. Repeat same step on the right side, the pipe over the middle, pulling down to the bottom creating a beak.

Allow the chocolate to completely cool and firm up.

You can make these look like cute Hoot owls, or if I make them look menacing,
my husband calls them Horned Owls.

To each his own.

Hey, it is Halloween after all! We can become anything we want on that day!!

Happy Hauntings!

The creator of this recipe is Natalie R. Riggin
It was the 2nd Grand Prize Winner in the Pillsbury Bakeoff in 1956